MEATS. 463 
the convalescent. It must be remembered that flesh meat 
which shows the slightest sign of incipient decomposition is 
dangerous. Heat sufficient to destroy bacterial life never 
reaches the middle of large pieces of meat during their cooking ; 
it penetrates only slowly into the interior of the flesh, and never 
reaches therein to the degree of 100° C. ; so that, if present within 
the meat, most of such bacteria would probably survive the 
ordinary process of cooking, and in any case their spores would 
be certain to retain a dangerous vitality. If the juice which 
can be expressed from cooked meat is a turbid liquid, then it is 
likely that the temperature in cooking has not exceeded 56° C. : 
if it is of a clear red, then the temperature has probably risen 
to between 50° and 60° C., but not exceeding 65° C.; if up to 
70° C. the colour of the meat juice changes to brownish red; 
and between 75° and 80° C. to yellow. With respect to cold 
meat, it must be noted that if, after being cooked, and become 
cold, it remains exposed to any injurious influence, such as 
dust, flies, or noxious smells, even within a few hours it will 
generate microbic bacilli in large numbers, which are prejudicial 
to health. Cold meat-jelly is used as a prolific germinator in 
every experimental laboratory; so that re-cooked, hot meat 
is always more wholesome, and a safer food, than cold cooked 
meat, unless quite recent, and absolutely fresh. 
Broiled meat is less likely to contain microbes, or bacilli still 
living, than meat roasted in joints, because in these latter the 
heat about the middle of the roasted joint does not reach a 
degree destructive to the microbes; whereas within the thinner 
broiled meats it attains a considerably higher degree, such as 
will put an end to the micro-organisms. No animal parasite 
in meat can withstand a temperature of 70° C. as attained in 
ordinary cooking, which therefore renders it free from any such 
elements of infection; but this is not the case as regards the 
pathogenic bacteria of typhoid, or putrescence. “ Planked ” 
meat (and fish) are in this way made antiseptic, as well as very 
palatable. Baked food done on a suitable plank in the oven 
is essentially wholesome, and dainty. On Easter Sunday (1512), 
in the Bay of the Cross, U.S.A., the natives were found cooking 
fish upon logs with a fire upon the beach. Of course the plank 
must be of a proper sort, recent oak being capital for the purpose ; 
it contains pyroligneous acid, which rises by the heat of baking. 
Also animal oil flows out of the meat, or fish, into the plank, 
